Read the full report by Professor Wyn Grant hereProfessor Wyn Grant's analysis of the implications of BREXIT on UK agriculture has been published by the Farmer Scientist Network and the Yorkshire Agricultural Society. The report concludes that "it is difficult to see exit as beneficial to the UK farming sector or to the UK food and drink industry more generally".

Read the full article by Alasdair MacEwen in Business Green The French legislature has just passed into law the "energy transition for green growth" Bill. Ecology minister Ségolène Royal describes it as "the most advanced and ambitious piece of environmental legislation in Europe, and probably the world" – this is, perhaps, an exaggeration - but it could still end up as one of France’s most significant Bills in decades. And it has put Royal in the spotlight ahead of December's COP21 meeting in Paris. The law, in development for almost three years, brings in binding energy targets for transport, housing and renewable energy. A striking last minute amendment was cross-party agreement to increase the duty on the carbon content of fuels (known in France as la taxecarbone) from €14.5 to €100 per tonne of CO2 by 2030, although this still needs ratification in the annual budget.

One of the European commission’s more controversial decisions under president Jean-Claude Juncker’s Better Regulation initiative was to scrap the European Union’s circular economy package last year. MEPs and the outgoing environment commissioner Janez Potočnik protested vocally until the new first vice-president of the commission (and regulatory hawk) Frans Timmermans pledged to re-introduce a “more ambitious” circular economy package with a much broader economic scope than the previous one, which had focused mainly on recycling targets.

Read the full article by Edward Robinson on Financial Times, beyondbricsOne of the most interesting solar projects around, TuNur, hopes to generate two nuclear power plants’ worth of renewable electricity in the Tunisian desert, export it to Italy via a 1,000km high-voltage DC cable and connect it to European grids as far afield as the UK, where it could power over 2m homes. Three developments are helping and could set a precedent for further projects: strides in the cost-effectiveness both of undersea transmission cables and solar power, the EU’s Energy Union and climate packages, and the new Tunisian government’s liberalisation of its energy laws.